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mghoshlisbin's reviews
336 reviews
A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
4.25
“Abstract words such as glory, honor, courage, or hallow were obscene beside the concrete names of villages, the numbers of roads, the names of rivers the numbers of regiments, and the dates” (185).
My first foray into Hemingway had been The Old Man and the Sea, which I had immediately fallen in love with. Santiago’s tale of pursuit is rapturous, and his prose sophisticated. A Farewell to Arms was a similarly impressive piece of literature.
I will admit that Hemingway’s tonality and form is unusual—the staccato quality of the sentences and the way he dances around the evocation of emotion can be a hit or a miss, depending on the reader and their preferences. However, in terms of a story set in World War I, such is A Farewell to Arms , I find this style specifically engaging, a perfect choice, for the ways that war creeps itself into our skin, into the pains of civilian life, across the borders of countries. There is no escape from its ravages—on the battlefield, in a hospital, or even within the beds of lovers. Hemingway’s style presents this without the falseness of sentimentality, and I think it brings the novel to more astuteness than most war stories, even some of the most lauded (i.e. All Quiet on the Western Front).
A Farewell to Arms follows American lieutenant Frederick Henry, who is an ambulance driver on the Italian front during the First World War. After he is injured during an explosion, he meets the English Catherine Barkley. Despite the harsh realities of war, Henry’s desertion, and the utter lack of certainty in a time of disaster, they fall in love. Throughout the novel, war infiltrates even their most intimate moments, or perhaps replicates itself there.
Hemingway builds an intriguing argument for the boredom of war as well. As I am new the war literature, perhaps this is a more vetted theme, but it was a fascinating topic for me. Throughout the novel, Henry provides long descriptions of the landscapes, primarily in Italy and Switzerland, which can seem hollow and mundane. Henry uses these as a way to engage himself, not only to distract himself from war, but to simply fill the time. In terms of style, Hemingway has a specific way of lacking sentence variation which inspires the sensation of repetition, boredom, sameness. “He drank a beer,” or “he read the paper”. They’re inherently non-descriptive and repeated over and over again, inspiring a monotony that spreads through Henry as much as it does the reader. Even so, however much Hemingway illustrates the boredom that can come with war, the efficacy of his writing style is sustained in the ways he also includes contrast. The passage in which Henry is injured through the shell explosion is quite graphic, jarringly so. Not only is the gore of the violence disturbing, but Hemingway intersperses the indifference of Henry with moments of true poeticism. “‘They [the soldiers] were beaten to start with. They were beaten when they took them from their farms and put them in the army. That is why the peasant has wisdom, because he is defeated from the start. Put him in power and see how wise he is” (179). The conversations between the priest and Henry throughout earlier sections of the novel are quite illuminating as to Hemingway’s feelings about war, and the consequences of its existence.
“I went out the door and suddenly I felt lonely and empty. I had treated seeing Catherine very lightly, I had gotten somewhat drunk and had nearly forgotten to come but when I could not see her there I was feeling lonely and hollow” (41).
It is arguable that the relationship between Catherine and Henry mirrors the boredoms and intensities of war. This is primarily through the strangely simultaneous lack of commitment and strong devotion that they have for one another. Catherine will flip flop on whether she cares for Henry or wants to see him. Henry will have moments of exceptionally deep devotion, and then immediately after, leave her side for a beer and lunch. Even the initiation of their relationship was somewhat lack luster - in which Henry revealed that he didn’t actually love her, but that their relationship could be some form of casual fun. Despite the fact that Henry abandons war to be with Catherine, he also reminiscences about his comrades while he’s with her. Or perhaps, despite the fact that they constantly talk about getting married, it never comes to fruition, even once Catherine becomes pregnant. Both of them fluctuate constantly. These moments of indifference are juxtaposed with a yearning crucial love - Henry’s litanies of prayers during Catherine’s onslaught of hemorrhages (330) alongside his regular food breaks during her difficult labor, or his complete lack of care for the baby who had died.
Hemingway is well-known for his love of objective realism, and this is just as clear in A Farewell to Arms, as Hemingway himself had been in the Ambulance Corps on the Italian Front. He had also had a relationship with Agnes von Kurowsky, a nurse, to whom his indifference was also somewhat plain. There is not much commentary on their relationship that I can provide, but I find it interesting that Hemingway inserts himself into his own literature. Regardless, this was a lovely re-entry into Hemingway’s literature. I am sure to visit again soon.
My first foray into Hemingway had been The Old Man and the Sea, which I had immediately fallen in love with. Santiago’s tale of pursuit is rapturous, and his prose sophisticated. A Farewell to Arms was a similarly impressive piece of literature.
I will admit that Hemingway’s tonality and form is unusual—the staccato quality of the sentences and the way he dances around the evocation of emotion can be a hit or a miss, depending on the reader and their preferences. However, in terms of a story set in World War I, such is A Farewell to Arms , I find this style specifically engaging, a perfect choice, for the ways that war creeps itself into our skin, into the pains of civilian life, across the borders of countries. There is no escape from its ravages—on the battlefield, in a hospital, or even within the beds of lovers. Hemingway’s style presents this without the falseness of sentimentality, and I think it brings the novel to more astuteness than most war stories, even some of the most lauded (i.e. All Quiet on the Western Front).
A Farewell to Arms follows American lieutenant Frederick Henry, who is an ambulance driver on the Italian front during the First World War. After he is injured during an explosion, he meets the English Catherine Barkley. Despite the harsh realities of war, Henry’s desertion, and the utter lack of certainty in a time of disaster, they fall in love. Throughout the novel, war infiltrates even their most intimate moments, or perhaps replicates itself there.
Hemingway builds an intriguing argument for the boredom of war as well. As I am new the war literature, perhaps this is a more vetted theme, but it was a fascinating topic for me. Throughout the novel, Henry provides long descriptions of the landscapes, primarily in Italy and Switzerland, which can seem hollow and mundane. Henry uses these as a way to engage himself, not only to distract himself from war, but to simply fill the time. In terms of style, Hemingway has a specific way of lacking sentence variation which inspires the sensation of repetition, boredom, sameness. “He drank a beer,” or “he read the paper”. They’re inherently non-descriptive and repeated over and over again, inspiring a monotony that spreads through Henry as much as it does the reader. Even so, however much Hemingway illustrates the boredom that can come with war, the efficacy of his writing style is sustained in the ways he also includes contrast. The passage in which Henry is injured through the shell explosion is quite graphic, jarringly so. Not only is the gore of the violence disturbing, but Hemingway intersperses the indifference of Henry with moments of true poeticism. “‘They [the soldiers] were beaten to start with. They were beaten when they took them from their farms and put them in the army. That is why the peasant has wisdom, because he is defeated from the start. Put him in power and see how wise he is” (179). The conversations between the priest and Henry throughout earlier sections of the novel are quite illuminating as to Hemingway’s feelings about war, and the consequences of its existence.
“I went out the door and suddenly I felt lonely and empty. I had treated seeing Catherine very lightly, I had gotten somewhat drunk and had nearly forgotten to come but when I could not see her there I was feeling lonely and hollow” (41).
It is arguable that the relationship between Catherine and Henry mirrors the boredoms and intensities of war. This is primarily through the strangely simultaneous lack of commitment and strong devotion that they have for one another. Catherine will flip flop on whether she cares for Henry or wants to see him. Henry will have moments of exceptionally deep devotion, and then immediately after, leave her side for a beer and lunch. Even the initiation of their relationship was somewhat lack luster - in which Henry revealed that he didn’t actually love her, but that their relationship could be some form of casual fun. Despite the fact that Henry abandons war to be with Catherine, he also reminiscences about his comrades while he’s with her. Or perhaps, despite the fact that they constantly talk about getting married, it never comes to fruition, even once Catherine becomes pregnant. Both of them fluctuate constantly. These moments of indifference are juxtaposed with a yearning crucial love - Henry’s litanies of prayers during Catherine’s onslaught of hemorrhages (330) alongside his regular food breaks during her difficult labor, or his complete lack of care for the baby who had died.
Hemingway is well-known for his love of objective realism, and this is just as clear in A Farewell to Arms, as Hemingway himself had been in the Ambulance Corps on the Italian Front. He had also had a relationship with Agnes von Kurowsky, a nurse, to whom his indifference was also somewhat plain. There is not much commentary on their relationship that I can provide, but I find it interesting that Hemingway inserts himself into his own literature. Regardless, this was a lovely re-entry into Hemingway’s literature. I am sure to visit again soon.
Pitch Dark by Renata Adler
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
3.75
Less than an affair, I think this novel is more about someone who constantly feels second place to an idea that has become the center of their world.
I am also intrigued by Kate’s pursuit of “quiet” or “rest”, this push around the globe, a desperate attempt to avoid her own self-scrutiny. Perhaps, because I have the inclination to read everything through lens which I am in current obsession, but this novel is more so a scrutinization of self and personhood, politics and art, than it is a romantic affair. In the wake of reading A Hunger Artist by Kafka, I read this novella as a deep examination of self, a humiliation of oneself in the aftermath of searching. You can focus on set refrains: “You are, you know, you were the nearest thing to a real story to happen in my life” or perhaps, “What you’ve done, though, is to arrange you life so that all the things with a little joy or beauty in them were the things in which I had no part.” But these moments of lingering love with Jake are, in my opinion, heavily outweighed by her experiences and the quality of language that Adler brings to the minutiae of her experiences.
I am caught relentlessly in the tide of her slow forming relationship with the raccoon outside her house ( “I thought he was growing to trust me, when in fact he was dying” ), her strange dissociation at the sight of the Evian bottle in Cihrbradàn (70), her commentary on monotony as “a method of enthrallment” (110) and of sentimentality in writing, in reference to Gertrude Stein (115). Her discussion of Jake is the least interesting component of this book, and Kate’s solitude, deep melancholy, is drawn out by the people she seeks to understand and the tides of exhaustion and isolation she feels in its wake.
I am also caught by her final discussions of legality and storytelling in the final pages of the novella. Perhaps I react so strongly to these lines because I find them inherently wrong.
“So what comes before the court is of necessity, and constitutionally obliged to be, a story: and the only ones permitted to bring the story to the courts’ attention, the only storytellers, are the ones to whom the story happened, whom the facts befell” (145).
As someone in my profession, is this not perhaps the most erroneous, and perhaps idealistic, interpretation of the law? Law is an act, a play story, a falsification of facts, in such line as Kate’s previous observations in another context. I disagree also, that law is inherently different from writing in the sense that it is “settled”, pursuant of its own consistency. What is this but another formation of literary canon? Writing is an establishment of imagination, but law is a constant pursuit of truth. Do they not see one another as brothers? As fraternity?
I think I always enjoy Adler when I read her—she is startling and arabesque. Her style falls into the categories of Kate Zambreno (particularly of Drifts ) and Siri Hustvedt. I am interested to understand her better.
I am also intrigued by Kate’s pursuit of “quiet” or “rest”, this push around the globe, a desperate attempt to avoid her own self-scrutiny. Perhaps, because I have the inclination to read everything through lens which I am in current obsession, but this novel is more so a scrutinization of self and personhood, politics and art, than it is a romantic affair. In the wake of reading A Hunger Artist by Kafka, I read this novella as a deep examination of self, a humiliation of oneself in the aftermath of searching. You can focus on set refrains: “You are, you know, you were the nearest thing to a real story to happen in my life” or perhaps, “What you’ve done, though, is to arrange you life so that all the things with a little joy or beauty in them were the things in which I had no part.” But these moments of lingering love with Jake are, in my opinion, heavily outweighed by her experiences and the quality of language that Adler brings to the minutiae of her experiences.
I am caught relentlessly in the tide of her slow forming relationship with the raccoon outside her house ( “I thought he was growing to trust me, when in fact he was dying” ), her strange dissociation at the sight of the Evian bottle in Cihrbradàn (70), her commentary on monotony as “a method of enthrallment” (110) and of sentimentality in writing, in reference to Gertrude Stein (115). Her discussion of Jake is the least interesting component of this book, and Kate’s solitude, deep melancholy, is drawn out by the people she seeks to understand and the tides of exhaustion and isolation she feels in its wake.
I am also caught by her final discussions of legality and storytelling in the final pages of the novella. Perhaps I react so strongly to these lines because I find them inherently wrong.
“So what comes before the court is of necessity, and constitutionally obliged to be, a story: and the only ones permitted to bring the story to the courts’ attention, the only storytellers, are the ones to whom the story happened, whom the facts befell” (145).
As someone in my profession, is this not perhaps the most erroneous, and perhaps idealistic, interpretation of the law? Law is an act, a play story, a falsification of facts, in such line as Kate’s previous observations in another context. I disagree also, that law is inherently different from writing in the sense that it is “settled”, pursuant of its own consistency. What is this but another formation of literary canon? Writing is an establishment of imagination, but law is a constant pursuit of truth. Do they not see one another as brothers? As fraternity?
I think I always enjoy Adler when I read her—she is startling and arabesque. Her style falls into the categories of Kate Zambreno (particularly of Drifts ) and Siri Hustvedt. I am interested to understand her better.
The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
challenging
dark
emotional
slow-paced
5.0
A magnificent read, but one that is by no means easy. You may find that disclaimer in any review of the novel. I do not feel the need to write a more coherent rendering of my own notes into a review, as I did not do so for Absalom, Absalom either, but I should have an organized space for the way I felt over the course of the novel.
Chapter 1 - Benjy/Maury
* Complete lack of temporal and spatial stability. Faulkner seems to switch the perspective years using italics, but this is not always consistent. Throughout the current novel, Benjy is focuses his order through sounds/smells/the grounding aspect of nature (caddy smells like trees) and through his relationship to Caddy. He seems to be completely ruled by order or chaos, chaos indicated through the moments when he moans. (It is interesting to me that his clarity and sensitivity are attached to the two more excitatory romantic notions: sex/love and death).
* There are moments of intense clarity which I think bring together the power of his perspective:
* Import moment: When all three Compton brothers look up and see Caddy’s muddy underwear when she’s climbing the tree. It seems to me that Caddy is emblematic of a wildness, a freedom of belief, whereas both Quentin and Benjy are ruled by their intellect and by their relationship to time. I think this is the moment that takes all three of them off the edge in different ways - I think it is the sheer animalism of her; though she pays the price, she is not tethered to the social demands or intellectual/emotional deficiencies/limitations of her brothers. And she, in turn, becomes alien to them.
Chapter 2 - Quentin
* Quentin, in particular (chapter 2) seems to be wholly controlled by his dedication to Southern purity, which he holds Caddy accountable for. He is obsessed with her, reifies her as the ultimate representative of his grounding principles. Her marriage to Herbert, her loss of virginity, of her “camphor” smell, makes him lose his grasp on the real and unreal. He becomes untethered to his rigid moral foreground. This, I think is made even more complicated, by his father’s disinterest in virginity or virginity as a construct that means nothing and creates meaningless harm in fools like Quentin (116).
* “And father said it's because you are a virgin: don't you see? Women are never virgins. Purity is negative state in therefore contrary in nature. It's nature is hurting you not Caddy and I said That's just words and he said So is virginity and I said You don't know. You can't know and he said Yes. And on the instant when we come to realize the tragedy is second hand” (116).
* The cold pragmatism of his father seems to be incredibly disjointed for Quentin, disavowal of his beliefs in Southern purity, his foregrounding pole of morals.
* “it seems to me that I can hear whispers secret surges smelled a beating heart of blood under wild unsecret flesh watching against red eyelids the swine untethered in pairs rushing coupled into the sea and he we must just stay awake and sea eagle done for a little while. [… ] he every man is the arbiter of his own virtues whether or not you consider it courageous is of more importance than the act itself in any act otherwise you could not be in earnest and I you don't believe I am serious and he Eitan you are too serious to give me any cause for alarm you wouldn't have felt driven to the experience of telling me you hadn't committed incest otherwise and I I wasn't lying I wasn't lying and he you wanted to sublimate a piece of natural human folly into a horror and then exercise it with truth and I it was the isolate her out of the loud world so that it would have to flee us of necessity and then the sound of it would be as though it had never been (176).
* I could probably spend hours analyzing this single page, but I believe this is a roll credits moment - the pinnacle of the sound and the fury. At once Quentin finds the intersection between the experiences of Benjy, himself, and Jason, in a furious passage, desperate with longing earnestness. The confusion of pronouns between that of himself and his brothers showcases and disjointedness of identity, one which I think cements his later move toward suicide.
Chapter 3 - Jason
* I felt somewhat unprepared for the vitriol in his narration (once a bitch, always a bitch), and his particular hatred for Miss Quentin (Caddy’s illegitimate daughter). I think what surprised me more was the fact that he was willing to burn the 200$ checks from Caddy. His hatred and pride overcame his pragmatism, which was simultaneously disgusting and on brand. Clearly he has resentments toward Ms. Quentin because he believes that Caddy cheated him out of a job and that Ms. Quentin is the reason why.
* It was also particularly startling, in this chapter, that the narration becomes increasingly linear and coherent with each progressive brother. Benjy is completely untethered from temporality and place, Quentin struggles to escape time, to live beyond time, but Jason was completely clear. I might consider that he in completely stuck in the constraints of the present. The authorial section that follows, instinctively Faulkner himself, is also clear.
* Anger toward black people; receptacles for his hatred
* The ways in which he burned the tickets instead of giving them to Luster (why, for what purpose other than to antagonize?).
Chapter 4 - Faulkner
* The role of Dilsey - maternal, caretaker, legitimate care for Benjy. What is the analysis here? She is the one character that cares for everyone.
* Black religiosity; maybe an invocation of genuine religion? Or is this a condemnation from the mouth of Faulkner? (294)
* “‘Never you mind,’ Dilsey said. ‘I seed de beginnin, en now I sees de endin.’” (297).
Chapter 1 - Benjy/Maury
* Complete lack of temporal and spatial stability. Faulkner seems to switch the perspective years using italics, but this is not always consistent. Throughout the current novel, Benjy is focuses his order through sounds/smells/the grounding aspect of nature (caddy smells like trees) and through his relationship to Caddy. He seems to be completely ruled by order or chaos, chaos indicated through the moments when he moans. (It is interesting to me that his clarity and sensitivity are attached to the two more excitatory romantic notions: sex/love and death).
* There are moments of intense clarity which I think bring together the power of his perspective:
* Import moment: When all three Compton brothers look up and see Caddy’s muddy underwear when she’s climbing the tree. It seems to me that Caddy is emblematic of a wildness, a freedom of belief, whereas both Quentin and Benjy are ruled by their intellect and by their relationship to time. I think this is the moment that takes all three of them off the edge in different ways - I think it is the sheer animalism of her; though she pays the price, she is not tethered to the social demands or intellectual/emotional deficiencies/limitations of her brothers. And she, in turn, becomes alien to them.
Chapter 2 - Quentin
* Quentin, in particular (chapter 2) seems to be wholly controlled by his dedication to Southern purity, which he holds Caddy accountable for. He is obsessed with her, reifies her as the ultimate representative of his grounding principles. Her marriage to Herbert, her loss of virginity, of her “camphor” smell, makes him lose his grasp on the real and unreal. He becomes untethered to his rigid moral foreground. This, I think is made even more complicated, by his father’s disinterest in virginity or virginity as a construct that means nothing and creates meaningless harm in fools like Quentin (116).
* “And father said it's because you are a virgin: don't you see? Women are never virgins. Purity is negative state in therefore contrary in nature. It's nature is hurting you not Caddy and I said That's just words and he said So is virginity and I said You don't know. You can't know and he said Yes. And on the instant when we come to realize the tragedy is second hand” (116).
* The cold pragmatism of his father seems to be incredibly disjointed for Quentin, disavowal of his beliefs in Southern purity, his foregrounding pole of morals.
* “it seems to me that I can hear whispers secret surges smelled a beating heart of blood under wild unsecret flesh watching against red eyelids the swine untethered in pairs rushing coupled into the sea and he we must just stay awake and sea eagle done for a little while. [… ] he every man is the arbiter of his own virtues whether or not you consider it courageous is of more importance than the act itself in any act otherwise you could not be in earnest and I you don't believe I am serious and he Eitan you are too serious to give me any cause for alarm you wouldn't have felt driven to the experience of telling me you hadn't committed incest otherwise and I I wasn't lying I wasn't lying and he you wanted to sublimate a piece of natural human folly into a horror and then exercise it with truth and I it was the isolate her out of the loud world so that it would have to flee us of necessity and then the sound of it would be as though it had never been (176).
* I could probably spend hours analyzing this single page, but I believe this is a roll credits moment - the pinnacle of the sound and the fury. At once Quentin finds the intersection between the experiences of Benjy, himself, and Jason, in a furious passage, desperate with longing earnestness. The confusion of pronouns between that of himself and his brothers showcases and disjointedness of identity, one which I think cements his later move toward suicide.
Chapter 3 - Jason
* I felt somewhat unprepared for the vitriol in his narration (once a bitch, always a bitch), and his particular hatred for Miss Quentin (Caddy’s illegitimate daughter). I think what surprised me more was the fact that he was willing to burn the 200$ checks from Caddy. His hatred and pride overcame his pragmatism, which was simultaneously disgusting and on brand. Clearly he has resentments toward Ms. Quentin because he believes that Caddy cheated him out of a job and that Ms. Quentin is the reason why.
* It was also particularly startling, in this chapter, that the narration becomes increasingly linear and coherent with each progressive brother. Benjy is completely untethered from temporality and place, Quentin struggles to escape time, to live beyond time, but Jason was completely clear. I might consider that he in completely stuck in the constraints of the present. The authorial section that follows, instinctively Faulkner himself, is also clear.
* Anger toward black people; receptacles for his hatred
* The ways in which he burned the tickets instead of giving them to Luster (why, for what purpose other than to antagonize?).
Chapter 4 - Faulkner
* The role of Dilsey - maternal, caretaker, legitimate care for Benjy. What is the analysis here? She is the one character that cares for everyone.
* Black religiosity; maybe an invocation of genuine religion? Or is this a condemnation from the mouth of Faulkner? (294)
* “‘Never you mind,’ Dilsey said. ‘I seed de beginnin, en now I sees de endin.’” (297).
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
3.75
"But I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness, I want sin."
"In fact, " said Mustapha Mond, "you're claiming the right to be unhappy."
While, at heart, a protest novel, Aldous Huxley may write one of the most enjoyable protest novels I have read in quite a while. Though Brave New World had been on my list of books to read for some time, I was pushed to finally pick it up because of Michel Houellebecq's clear adoration of Huxley in The Elementary Particles . It was incredibly accessible--so a good choice for someone who is trying to get into classics.
The novel follows a small set of characters: Bernard Marx and Helmholtz Watson, both misfit "Alphas" of a civilized society and John "the Savage", a medium between the uncivilized world and the "new world". The story is set in a futuristic world in which harmony and stability are prioritized by chemically diminishing all excessive emotion, individualistic thinking, monogamy, and procreation. Any indulgence in solitude or strong emotional attachments to a given person is deemed a sort of “solipsism” against the “social body,” in which “everyone belongs to everyone else.” This sanitized world is dominated by the use of a drug called soma which creates a fictional simulation of positive emotion, drowning out any negative feeling. This, in conjunction with "scent organs" and "feelies" creates a wholly sanitized world that is controlled by a government of elite exceptions to the rule.
I think I was most fascinated by the Bokanovsky armies that are created and conditioned through sleep training. From a more modern perspective, the sleep conditioning feels eerily similar to the ways in which we passively consume social media. While exaggerated, modern psychologists suggest that the regular and constant use of social media can be detrimental to critical thinking, perfect for creating the "happy" but malleable populace that is central to Huxley's novel. Furthermore, the work of the Epsilon, or lowest echelon, caste, is monitored such that they "enjoy" it.
John, the "civilized Savage" who is of both worlds, is destined to fail in his journey to liberate civilized society to individual emotional freedom. Though I think this aspect of the novel is perhaps it's weakest point, I do acknowledge that the imagery in the final whipping scene is immensely powerful, and has been pulled into many modern scenes of horror (think: Midsommar and the scene in which the cult wives cry and scream in tandem with Dani's panic attack).
Wholly engrossing, powerful themes, if a bit on the nose. It is difficult to determine whether I feel this way because I have been exposed to iterations of Huxley's ideas in modern media/literature, or whether the writing itself was less genius than implied.
"In fact, " said Mustapha Mond, "you're claiming the right to be unhappy."
While, at heart, a protest novel, Aldous Huxley may write one of the most enjoyable protest novels I have read in quite a while. Though Brave New World had been on my list of books to read for some time, I was pushed to finally pick it up because of Michel Houellebecq's clear adoration of Huxley in The Elementary Particles . It was incredibly accessible--so a good choice for someone who is trying to get into classics.
The novel follows a small set of characters: Bernard Marx and Helmholtz Watson, both misfit "Alphas" of a civilized society and John "the Savage", a medium between the uncivilized world and the "new world". The story is set in a futuristic world in which harmony and stability are prioritized by chemically diminishing all excessive emotion, individualistic thinking, monogamy, and procreation. Any indulgence in solitude or strong emotional attachments to a given person is deemed a sort of “solipsism” against the “social body,” in which “everyone belongs to everyone else.” This sanitized world is dominated by the use of a drug called soma which creates a fictional simulation of positive emotion, drowning out any negative feeling. This, in conjunction with "scent organs" and "feelies" creates a wholly sanitized world that is controlled by a government of elite exceptions to the rule.
I think I was most fascinated by the Bokanovsky armies that are created and conditioned through sleep training. From a more modern perspective, the sleep conditioning feels eerily similar to the ways in which we passively consume social media. While exaggerated, modern psychologists suggest that the regular and constant use of social media can be detrimental to critical thinking, perfect for creating the "happy" but malleable populace that is central to Huxley's novel. Furthermore, the work of the Epsilon, or lowest echelon, caste, is monitored such that they "enjoy" it.
John, the "civilized Savage" who is of both worlds, is destined to fail in his journey to liberate civilized society to individual emotional freedom. Though I think this aspect of the novel is perhaps it's weakest point, I do acknowledge that the imagery in the final whipping scene is immensely powerful, and has been pulled into many modern scenes of horror (think: Midsommar and the scene in which the cult wives cry and scream in tandem with Dani's panic attack).
Wholly engrossing, powerful themes, if a bit on the nose. It is difficult to determine whether I feel this way because I have been exposed to iterations of Huxley's ideas in modern media/literature, or whether the writing itself was less genius than implied.